raccoon
Pluralraccoons
- 1A small wild animal with gray-brown fur, a black mask around its eyes, and a striped tail.
Like a cat-sized animal that looks like it's wearing a little black mask.
A raccoon knocked over our trash cans last night.
We saw two raccoons climbing the old oak tree at dusk.
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- 2The most common North American kind, with the familiar masked face and ringed tail.
A raccoon visits our backyard pond almost every evening.
The raccoon pulled the lid off the compost bin.
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- 3Any animal in the wider raccoon family group, like coatis and ringtails.
Coatis are a type of raccoon that live in Central and South America.
Ringtails are slender raccoons with very long, banded tails.
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- 4Any animal in the broad raccoon family, including coatis, kinkajous, and ringtails.
A kinkajou is a tree-dwelling raccoon from the rainforests of Central America.
Olingos are small raccoons that rarely come down to the ground.
- 5Any animal that looks like a raccoon but is not really one, such as the raccoon dog.
Like calling a dog a wolf just because the two look alike.
From a distance, a raccoon dog looks so much like a raccoon that people mix them up.
She kept insisting the shaggy creature was a raccoon, even after the guide explained it wasn't.
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Practice
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Origin
It comes from a Powhatan word meaning "he scratches with his hands."